Mayer Hawthorne: The Best New Soul Singer We've Heard This Year

In the annals of whiteness,Mayer Hawthorne is a glass of skim milk, a corpse pulled from a lake, a man so pale-skinned he's damn near blue. On the cover of his debut record, A Strange Arrangement, he looks like Tobey McGuire as directed by Wes Anderson, making a donation to NPR as the Starlight Vocal Band plays in the background. He is that white. His name is Mayer Hawthorne, for chrissakes!

But then you listen to Hawthorne's music and you suddenly realize this thirty-year-old nebbish from Detroit is a good glory GODDAMN give the drummer some SOUL SANGER!A Strange Arrangement is a master class in soul music, jumping from Curtis Mayfield's bongo-fueled funk to the slow-dancin' groove of the Stylistics. Fair warning: The LP doesn't hit shelves until September. But the first single is already out, and it's a killer. On "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out," Hawthorne cribs one of Bobby Womack's classic spoken-word intros before leaning into an aching falsetto that invokes Smokey Robinson at his sweetest. And his talent doesn't stop there: Hawthorne plays every instrument, and arranged the album, too.

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